DOCUMENT RESUME ED 337 418 SP 033 241 AUTHOR Weiner, Lois TITLE Teachers: Lost at the Crossroads of Historiography. PUB LATE Apr 91 NOTE 24p.; Paper presented at the AnnualMeeting of the American Educational Research Association (Chicago, IL, April 3-7, 1991). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150)-- Information Analyses (070) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Educational History; Elementary SecondaryEducation; *Females; *Historiography; LiteratureReviews; *Teachers; *Teaching (Otoupation);*Unions IDENTIFIERS *Feminist Scholarship ABSTRACT The study of teachers may well bea lens for fusing history of education's disparate perspectives,for teachers stand at the intersection of several ofhistoriography's most dynamic currents. Teachers can be categorizedas women, uorkers, professionals, citizens, andconveyers of values and ideas. Yet, until quite recently, teachers andtheir lives were absent from the writing of historians. This paperexamines how and why several different waves of educational historiographyhave ignored the history of teachers. Ultimately, teachersas a subject of historical investigation were discovered at thecrossroads of labor and women's history, but not before both perspectiveswere well established. Teacher unionism and teachers asa subject cf feminist scholarship are discussed. Forty bibliographical referencesare included. (IAH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRSare the best that can be made from the original document. ***************************ft******************************************* TEACHERS: LOST AT THE CROSSROADS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY PAPER PRESENTED TO THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION CHICAGO, APRIL 1991 LOIS WEINER DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION, CURRICULUM, AND ADMINISTRATION JERSEY CITY STATE COLLEGE JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY U S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS Office of Educational Reteawn end improvemeni MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC? C Th.S 00Currint film been reproduced as 1/011):11..cf_r_ recerved from the person Or ofgamtetiOn Or.g.nfing MmOr changes have been made RI .mprowe reproduction quality Points of view or opmmns Staled m this dcx u TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES merit dO not necessarily represent &hew OE RI pOSitran Of pOliCy INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC).- 2 BiST COPY AVAILABLE The study of teachers may well be a lens for fusinghistory of education's disparate perspectives, for teachers stand at the intersection of several of historiography's most dynamic currents. Teachers can be categorized as women, workers, professionals, citizens, and conveyers of,values and ideas. Yet, until quite recently, teachers and their lives were absent from the writing of historians, no matter what their specialization. In his research on school envollment patterns in Providence, Joel Perlmann noted that we have little sense of how even to frame our questions about school life because of our astonishing lack of information about teachers.1 In this paper I will examine how and why several different waves of educational historiography have ignored the history of teachers. LOST -- AND FOUND -- AT THE CROSSROADS As the Sixties drew to a close, more than half a million American teachers, one out of every four elementary and secondary teachers, had engaged in work stoppages. By 1970, the politics of education had been substantially altered by the introduction of collective bargaining; teacher unionism had given organized labor a foothold in the white collar occupations it had targeted for membership growth; and the world's largest teacher union local had collided with the civil rights movement.2 Many publications discussed the startling emergence of teacher unionism, but historians of education, even those who defended their "presentist" concerns, paid it no serious attention for almost twenty-five years. The successive 1 reconceptualizations of educational history by "new historians," revisionists, and writers of social history, including historians of labor, women, and urbanization, ignored teachers and their organizations, though it was a topic germane to each of the new perspectives. How did this serial and collective historiographic myopia occur? The change in teachers' lives as workers and educatorswas prompt1y noted by some educational journals. Phi Delta Kappan rushed to discuss its first manifestation, the 1960 teachers strike in New York City: Myron Lieberman described "The Battle for New York City Teachers" and R.J. Barstow asked "Which Way New York City--Which way the Professionals?"3 Starting in 1963, the Teachers Colleae Record carried at least one articlea year about teacher unionism, prefacing a 1964 article with the note that teacher unionism was "one of the hottest issues before professional educators."4 In 1965 the Record editors noted the heavy volume of mail received after an exchange between representatives of the two organizations contending for teachers' loyalty and dues, the American ?ederation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA).5 As AFT's organizing vic'olies increased pressureon NEA to change its philosophy and tactics, academic interest in teacher unionism increased. Dissertation Abstracts chronicled both phenomena. In 1964-65, only one dissertation was written on collective bargaining in education, but by 1966-67 the numberhad jumped to 14. Between 1967 and 1969, 48 dissertations, primarily 2 in political '.*accience and sociology,were listed under "Collective Bargaining -Teachers," covering developmentsin Alabama, California, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Indiana,Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Kansas, Texas, Washington state,Utah, Connecticut, and Minnesota.8 Harvard Educational 11.4view showedless interest than the Teachers Colle e Record in this alterationin teachers' view of themselves and their work, waiting until1967 to acknowledge teacher unionism. Ina book review, Joseph Cronin warned that teacher unionism might not bring theeducational improvementa its proponents claimed. "Should negotiationssimply rearrange the balance of power between those whomanage a bureaucracy and those whc staff it, the prospects forbroader educational reformmay be dampened by still another formalizedset of constraints" he warned.7His apprehension may have beenshared by the Review's editors and explain why they delayedfive years after the Teachers Colle e Record to broachthe topic of teachers'new identity as unionists. GeorgeCounts countered Cronin's caution with a ringing defense of thenew development and concluded that at last "The time has arrived forplacAng the role of the teacher in historical perspective."8 Butan examination of the History of Education Quarterly over the next decadereveals that if Counts' statement is takenas a confirmation of fact rather thana plea, he was very much mistaken. Not forseven more years, when panels in the history of educationat the 1974 convention of the American Educational ResearchAssociation took up women's 3 r J i experience in educational history and teacher unionism, would teachers be formally discussed by historians of education; even then the discourse was episodic. In Wayne Urban's 1976 examlation of teacher organization and educational reform in the Progressive era he remarked on teachers' ,absence: "One topic that has been largely neglected in the 'renaissance' of educational history in the past two decades is the teacher".9 The omission was regularly noted but not corrected. In a 1977 Iyc)fEc...____QIucatioiyHistolluarterl exchange on somaling_in Capitalist America, Joseph Featherstone wondered at how "two Marxists have managed to write a full-scale study of American education that manages to omit the workers in the schools- the teachers."1° In his 1978essay review of The Culture and Politics of American Teachers, Arthur G. Powell again reminded historians that "The history of teachers has remained a neglected subject." Nor had the "recent flowering of urban school history done much to change the invisibility of teachers" he noted.11 Finally, in 1984, seventeen years after George Counts had proclaimed teachers' rightful place in the history of education, a photo of Margaret Haley graced the cover of History of Education Quarterly, along with Marvin Lazerson's essay review of two historical studies of teacher unionism.12 Why did historians of education, who were borrowing the tools of other social sciences, neglect a topic their colleagues in sociology and political science were mining so richly? To start, in the late 1950s and early 1960s under the intellectual 4 leadership of Bernard Bailyn and Lawrence Cremin, they were occupied with defining and relocating the discipline, placing the history of education in departments of history, where it would be defined broadly as cultural transmission across the generations, rather than in schools of education where its purpose was to educate teachers about schooling's institutional advances. Cremin argued that history cf education as practiced in schools of education had become a barren paean to progress, although he acknowledged that once real historians "raised the right questions, even the previous generation of historians of education could write fairly broadly and dispassionately" on them.13 Defendingthe "educationists," that is. historians of education wl..3 were in schools of education, Robert E. Mason acknowledged that their involvement in teacher preparation programs had indeed shaped their perspective on the history